September 30th is the Memorial of St. Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Catholic Church (342-420), considered the most learned of the Fathers of the Western Church. His father was a Christian who saw that Jerome was well educated, first at home and then sending him to Rome to study with a famous pagan grammarian and a Christian rhetorician. In Rome Jerome became fluent in Latin and Greek. Jerome was exposed to worldly ideas and sought pleasurable experiences, weakening his Christian upbringing. However, he was baptized by Pope Liberius in 360 AD at age 18. He states that it was my custom on Sundays to visit, with friends of my own age and tastes, the tombs of the martyrs and Apostles, going down into those subterranean galleries whose walls on both sides preserve the relics of the dead. He enjoyed deciphering the inscriptions. Jerome left Rome after three years out of intellectual curiosity accompanied by his boyhood friend Bonosus. They travelled to Aquileia and became friends with the monks of the monastery there. They then travelled to Treves, in Gaul where he renounced all secular pursuits to dedicate himself wholeheartedly to God. As a young scholar he was eager to build up a religious library, so he copied St. Hilarys books and Commentaries on the Psalms, and gathered other literary and religious treasures. Jerome returned home and later settled in Aquileia, Northern Italy. Jerome made friends, though described as an irascible man, and enemies while pursuing scholarly studies several years. Desiring a more perfect life of solitude and prayer Jerome travelled with friends toward the East to Antioch (Syria). His friends returned home while he went to live four years in the desert as a hermit to further study and live a life of austerity. He suffered illnesses in the desert but suffered even more from temptation. In the remotest part of a wild and stony desert, he wrote years afterwards, burnt up with the heat of the sun, so scorching that it frightens even the monks who live there, I seemed to myself to be in the midst of the delights and crowds of Rome.... In this exile and prison to which through fear of Hell I had voluntarily condemned myself, with no other company but scorpions and wild beasts, I many times imagined myself watching the dancing of Roman maidens as if I had been in the midst of them. My face was pallid with fasting, yet my will felt the assaults of desire. In my cold body and my parched flesh, which seemed dead before its death, passion was still able to live. Alone with the enemy, I threw myself in spirit at the feet of Jesus, watering them with my tears, and tamed my flesh by fasting whole weeks. I am not ashamed to disclose my temptations, though I grieve that I am not now what I then was. During these temptations Jerome studied Hebrew, hoping to overcome them: When my soul was on fire with wicked thoughts, as a last resort, I became a pupil to a monk who had been a Jew, in order to learn the Hebrew alphabet.... I turned to this language of hissing and broken-winded words. What labor it cost me, what difficulties I went through, how often I despaired and abandoned it and began again to learn... I thank our Lord that I now gather such sweet fruit from the bitter sowing of those studies. He read the pagan classics, such as by Cicero, for pleasure until in a vivid dream during an illness, he was standing before the tribunal of Christ: You are a Christian? asked by the judge skeptically. You are a Ciceronian. Where you treasure is, there your heart is also. During his time as hermit in the desert the Church at Antioch struggled with doctrinal disputes and called on Jerome, to give his opinions on the subjects at issue. He wrote to Pope Damasus in Rome for guidance, but did not receive an answer: On one side, the Arian fury rages, supported by the secular power; on the other side, the Church (at Antioch) is being divided into three parts, and each would draw me to itself. Jerome acknowledged Paulinus, leader of one party, as bishop of Antioch. Paulinus in turn ordained Jerome as a priest before he left the desert. Jerome consented to priestly ordination only on condition that he should not be obliged to serve in any church, knowing that his true vocation was to be a monk and recluse. About 380 Jerome left Antioch and went to Constantinople to study the Scriptures under its bishop, St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Two years later Jerome attended a council in Rome with Paulinus of Antioch that Pope Damasus assembled to deal with the Antioch schism. Jerome was appointed secretary of the council and when it was over, the Pope kept him as his own secretary. The Pope requested Jerome to revise the Latin New Testament was based on the Greek, but which had many errors. He also revised the Latin Psalter. Jerome contributed through his diligence and ability to the recognition of the Bishop of Romes prestige and effectiveness to arbitrate between disputes of the Church in the East as well as in the West. Jerome also fostered a new movement of Christian asceticism among a group of noble Roman ladies, several were later canonized by the Church: Saint Paula, her daughter Saint Eustochium and Saint Marcella. Pope Damasus was impressed by Jeromes personal holiness, learning, and integrity. But Jerome was widely disliked by pagans, evil-doers and even some Christians who were offended by his biting sarcasm and ruthless condemnation. Although Jeromes indignation was usually justified, his manner of expressing it both verbally and in letters aroused resentment. Thus, because of his bluntness, his own reputation was attacked and even his personal mannerisms were criticized, such as his walk and even his smile. This led to scandalous gossip about his relation with the ladies under his spiritual direction. With these circulating calumnies, the death of Pope Damasus in 384 and the new Pope who was less friendly to Jerome, he decided to return to the East together with his brother and some other men in 385. He was received with joy by the bishop of Antioch and other leading churchmen. Paula and some of the ladies that had been under his spiritual direction left Rome and joined Jerome with the aim of settling in the Holy Land. Jerome had a monastery for men built near the Basilica of the Nativity at Bethlehem with the remaining monies of his own patrimony and financial help from Paula. Three houses were established for women communities with Paula as head of one of these, and after her death, by her daughter Eustochium. It is reported that it was at this time that a wild lion entered the monastery and while the other monks fled in fear, Jerome saw the lion a thorn embedded in its paw. Jerome approached the lion and withdrew the thorn from a lion‘s paw and the animal was tamed and remained loyally at his side. Thus, a lion is pictured with Jerome in many works of art. Jerome later withdrew from the monastery to live and work in a large cave near the Saviors birthplace. He opened a free school there and also a hospice for pilgrims, as Paula revealed so that should Mary and Joseph visit Bethlehem again, they would have a place to stay. Jerome finally experienced some years of peaceful activity, enjoying the pilgrims of different languages and from various regions yet the religion is the same.... Let Rome keep its crowds, let its arenas run with blood, its circuses go mad, its theaters wallow in sensuality.... Yet even from his place of peaceful living Jerome did not remain silent whenever the Christian faith was threatened through his writings. He defended Marys virginity, the excellence of virginity and marriage as a good and honorable state. Later he also defended celibacy for monks and the veneration of relics of the saints: We do not worship the relics of the martyrs, but honor them in our worship of Him whose martyrs they are. We honor the servants in order that the respect paid to them may be reflected back to the Lord. He explained that honoring the martyrs was not idolatry since no Christian adored them as gods. If the Apostles and martyrs, while still living on earth, could pray for other men, how much more may they do it after their victories? Have they less power now that they are with Jesus Christ? From 395 to 400 Jerome was engaged in a dispute against those who translated Origens works in Latin, though there were heresies in Origens writings. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo became unwillingly involved in a controversy with Jerome. However these controversies did not interrupt his critical labor on the text of the Scriptures, which is the reason the Catholic Church regards him as the greatest of all the doctors in clarifying the Divine Word. He continued to study Hebrew, hiring a famous Jewish scholar, Bar Ananias, who came in the night to teach him so as to avoid criticism of other Jews. Jerome undertook to translate most of the books of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. The only parts of the Latin Vulgate Bible, which were not either translated or worked over by him are the Books of Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and the two Books of the Maccabees. The Council of Trent in the 1500s proclaimed Jeromes Vulgate translation as the authentic and authoritative Latin text of the Catholic Church. The Douay–Rheims Bible is the translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, France with the New Testament portion published in Reims, France in 1582 and the Old Testament published thirty years later by the University of Douai. St. Jerome laid aside his work of Scripture scholarship after the sacking of Rome by Goths and refugees fled from Rome to the East. He wrote: Who would have believed that the daughters of that mighty city would one day be wandering as servants and slaves on the shores of Egypt and Africa, or that Bethlehem would daily receive noble Romans, distinguished ladies, brought up in wealth and now reduced to beggary? I cannot help them all, but I grieve and weep with them, and am completely absorbed in the duties which charity imposes on me. I have put aside my commentary on Ezekiel and almost all study. For today we must translate the precepts of the Scriptures into deeds; instead of speaking saintly words, we must act them. His work was again interrupted a few years later by barbarians pushing north through Egypt into Palestine, and later by violent Pelagian heretics, whose followers entered Bethlehem to disperse the monks and nuns living there under the direction of Jerome, who had been opposing Pelagianism. Some of the monks were beaten, a deacon was killed, and monasteries were set on fire and Jerome himself had to go into hiding for a time. The following year Jerome fell ill, lingering for two years. With his body worn down by penance and excessive labor and his sight and voice almost gone, St. Jerome died peacefully on September 30, 420. He was buried under the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. His body was exhumed and transferred in the 1200s and his relics now lie at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, Italy Though St. Jerome was a challenging in his personality, he was a man of prayer and purity of heart, who lived his life of study, penance and contemplation that prepared him to be a sensitive interpreter of spiritual things. In addition to his great work of translation of Sacred Scripture that took over 30 years, he contributed to the distinction between canonical and apocryphal writings and to the field of Biblical archeology. His commentaries and his letters are one of our best sources of knowledge of the times. Let us thank God for St. Jerome and his talents that contributed to the passing on of Sacred Scripture. Let us pray, O God, who gave the Priest Saint Jerome a living and tender love for Sacred Scripture, grant that Your people may be ever more fruitfully nourished by Your Word and find in it the fount of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Read St. Jeromes writings... From the prologue of the commentary on Isaiah by Saint Jerome, priest I interpret as I should, following the command of Christ: Search the Scriptures, and Seek and you shall find. Christ will not say to me what he said to the Jews: You erred, not knowing the Scriptures and not knowing the power of God. For if, as Paul says, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and if the man who does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom of Gods, then ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. Therefore, I will imitate the head of a household who brings out of his storehouse things both new and old, and says to his spouse in the Song of Songs: I have kept for you things new and old, my beloved. In this way permit me to explain Isaiah, showing that he was not only a prophet, but an evangelist and an apostle as well. For he says about himself and the other evangelists: How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news, of those who announce peace. And God speaks to him as if he were an apostle: Whom shall I send, who will go to my people? And he answers: Here I am; send me. No one should think that I mean to explain the entire subject matter of this great book of Scripture in one brief sermon, since it contains all the mysteries of the Lord. It prophesies that Emmanuel is to be born of a virgin and accomplish marvelous works and signs. It predicts his death, burial and resurrection from the dead as the Savior of all men. I need say nothing about the natural sciences, ethics and logic. Whatever is proper to holy Scripture, whatever can be expressed in human language and understood by the human mind, is contained in the book of Isaiah. Of these mysteries the author himself testifies when he writes: You will be given a vision of all things, like words in a sealed scroll. When they give the writings to a wise man, they will say: Read this. And he will reply: I cannot, for it is sealed. And when the scroll is given to an uneducated man and he is told: Read this, he will reply: I do not know how to read. Should this argument appear weak to anyone, let him listen to the Apostle: Let two or three prophets speak, and let others interpret; if, however, a revelation should come to one of those who are seated there, let the first one be quiet. How can they be silent, since it depends on the Spirit who speaks through his prophets whether they remain silent or speak? If they understood what they were saying, all things would be full of wisdom and knowledge. But it was not the air vibrating with the human voice that reached their ears , but rather it was God speaking within the soul of the prophets, just as another prophet says: It is an angel who spoke in me; and again, Crying out in our hearts, Abba, Father, and I shall listen to what the Lord God says within me.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 22:58:52 +0000
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